[Closed] Wet Rooms are they worth having considering the costs and upheavel?

Disaster waiting to happen. If there is the smallest leak it can rot floor joists. A fiend had one, their cast iron bath fell through their floor. First they knew they had a problem. They are a perfect breeding environment for black spores. My brother lived in a fabulous house with one of its larger rooms made into a luxury bathroom. A luxury petri dish more like. It was minging. You'd need a dehumidifier running all the time to remove all the moisture. Along with flat roofs, wet rooms are a no no.

I would have one like a shot. All over Europe they are the norm. Just get it done by a reputable contractor and forget tiles - use plastic membranes ( dunno what they are called)

Costs for wet rooms are like the proverbial piece of string, however there are some very neat bits of kit now available. Has the bathroom got a suspended floor or a concrete one ? 3.5m x 2.5m is quite large by todays bathroom standards, is there any special reason you want to go the wet room route ?

My Sister-in-law has had one for the past 3 years and never had any issues with it. She suffers from MS, so it's a mobility benefit to her.

We had one done 2 yrs ago. Similar room size, no bath, fully tiled, professionally fitted. Cost just under £10,000.

Hmm, just going to do one.
Just built a ground floor extension, gets us access to another bed/room under the house, built a bathroom next to it.
Good extractor fan, nice big window to open.
Going to tile floor and up to ceiling.

Only way i would do it upstairs would be to get a company and use the plastic lino with the chemical welds etc.
Most hospital bathrooms are wet rooms, the same stuff is used there, done properly it works. Bit institutional though.

My dads also got one upstairs in a house. Not sure of cost though as the council fitted it.

Don't know if i could live with my only bathroom being a wet room.

you call that a wee bathroom?

He says 3.5 x 2.5. That could be feet 😀

Might have ****ed up on my guestimate more 6x4 feet!!!!!

I remember sitting in the showroom saying "blimey, this could cost five grand". Didn't stretch to underfloor heating.

Why not build a mudroom outside instead. With shower, toilet and sink. Naturally ventilated and any water that doesn't find itself into the drain will just flow to the outdoors.

Good water head as well at ground floor.

You can clean off outside in the mudroom before going indoors.

My brother has one, looks nice but ......

The bog paper is always wet - I can't help thinking that a break-through accident with fingers is imminent 🙁

Bog in seperate room so paper will not get moist!,hot water tap outside so pre shower mud off after most rides.

Just get a nice big walk in shower, much less problematic. Our friends had to have the whole floor ripped up twice with a wet room and it will need a lot more maintainance than I bet you can be bothered to do/pay for.

unless you have beneath your feet, an immovable concrete floor, and blockwork walls.... don't do it.

Cost an arm/leg be right pain to do, and WILL leave eventually.

errr.... 'leak' that is..

What lardman said - having experienced it in wooden framed houses I would only do it if I had a level concrete floor and block walls. Otherwise get a nice shower unit and a decent vanity and a bog and be done with it - cheaper and less likely to cause you a problem ! FWIW the one we experienced resu;ted in a rather large and rather unplanned floor drain when the joist gave way due to a silent and deadly leak !

Well they seem to manage all right in continental europe and in all the hospitals and nursing homes I have worked in.

True but then i'm not that keen on having a hospital style butynol sealed bathroom in my house. Maybe in 50 years when i keep pissing myself, but not now.

I really don't like them - getting cold, wet feet when you're cleaning your teeth or sitting on the bog isn't very pleasant. What exactly is wrong with a normal shower tray?

[i]What exactly is wrong with a normal shower tray? [/i] was almost exactly my thought process when someone told me about "wet rooms", even before they told me about the cost. But I am basically pretty tight about things that aren't amusing. 🙂

Comes down to proper preparation of the room. The Canadians use a fancy membrane system underneath the tile cement, secured by a wet mix adhesive. The whole room is done in this stuff(not the ceiling though). Floors will need a thick layer of plywood attaching to it to provide the rigid floor needed if you have floor boards. I would use electric underfloor heating for a small room as it will be cheaper/faster to install.
Ventilation should be a 5 inch fan minimum with lots of air changes per hour, HVAC handbooks recommend about 20 an hour.
Look to N. America as all their new housing is stick built and all the bits will be there for a sealed job.

If you bunged up all the holes on your Airborne frame that would make a cool radiator...

live in Sweden. We have wet rooms both upstairs and downstairs. all the houses in our development have them. in fact pretty much all the houses built since the 1960's have them. they're awesome 😀

both bathrooms in my house are wet rooms. We had the house built one year ago. they have been sealed and then have marble tiles on floors and walls. We have sealed the tiles and will continue to do so periodically. Both have underfloor heating and both have no problems. it is really common in Norway.

We have sealed the tiles and will continue to do so periodically.

not "fit and forget" then ?

Seems like a lot of fuss just so you can get splashy - though I recall one time my kids decided to have a water fight in the bath (aged 2 and 3), and the first we knew about it was when bathwater started running out of the light fitting in the kitchen! Luckily it was at my mother-in-law's :o)

forget tiles - use plastic membranes

Well, actually, our place was converted into a flat about 12 years ago. They just put up tiles on the wall - which, as everyone said, inevitably failed. The whole lot had to be ripped out.

Replacement had mega-heavy-duty plastic membrane (swimming pool membrane?) under normal tiling for decorative reasons. No problems since then. Love it.

Is that what they are called? I had one in my house in Taiwan but to be honest I couldn't really see the point. The whole bathroom floor gets covered in mud from your ride and takes twice as much cleaning. The houses over there are made of concrete BTW. I have a bathroom with a shower tray and bath and it is just so much more practical (we can bath the kids in the shower saving on water bills etc)

not "fit and forget" then ?

There is no such thing as fit and forget when it comes to using sealants for any job, as they only have a limited life and will need to be replaced at some point.

Actually, I'm not sure there is anything about houses that is fit and forget and you're fooling yourself to believe otherwise.

I can see wetrooms becoming very passé in a few years... a bit like artex ceilings or similar - not fundamentally bad but just a bit pointless and expensive to boot with high potential of problems.

Rich,

Not a job for the faint hearted or thin wallet. Best done on a soild ground floor. The problem with doing one on the first floor is the timber floor moves and if its tiled the smallest of movemet will let the water through. Best done with a sheet material like altro installed with welded joints by a Pro. Good Luck.....

Yours Ned

Our shower at work is a badly installed wet room. It had mushrooms growing in it at one point (literally, tiny little mushrooms). At the moment, it is sort of working, but the bits that seal the walls are peeling away from the real wall.

I would make very sure that whoever is installing one for you knows very well how to do it.

Joe

More or less going to pass on this as its stupidly expensive on the upstairs timber floor, many thanks for the responses.

Rich

Had one installed one for my Mum two years ago (she's worried about mobility as she gets older). I love it, she loves it. Small bathroom with a big window, first floor (concrete floor though), she doesn't have a problem with damp anything, not even toilet paper. Altro non-slip floor (they do some nice colours, and non-slip was important) rather than tiles, fitted professionally (wasn't all that expensive), just works. I also had electric underfloor heating fitted professionally, it doesn't work, I didn't pay...
I'd do it again at the drop of a hat.